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AbstractA good society is the goal for social policy. Recent years have seen a growing awareness that gross domestic product (GDP) alone does not measure this. Happiness and well‐being have increasingly been seen as elements that should influence welfare policies. This review article provides an overview of many of the ways to measure well‐being and happiness. It attempts to cover three distinct, but interrelated subjects. First, why and what can be used to complement GDP as measures for societal development. Second, is there a relation between well‐being, happiness and central social policy areas? Third, whether knowledge on what makes people happy could inform policymakers in their decisions. The article discusses the many new attempts to measure societal development, and the fact that there are so many that decision makers and citizens are drowning by numbers and thereby not able to grasp whether or not there is social progress. Lastly, by using the classical depiction of welfare states, the article analyses whether the indexes are in line herewith, and that, therefore, they might be used as an instrument for steering societies in the direction of a good society.

The research paper describes the empirical development on the labour markets in EU including employment, unemployment, public expenditures and inflows into labour market programmes. The analysis is set in a welfare state framework, and, uses welfare states clustering as a device for the comparison. Furthermore, the research paper analyses the development of labour market policy at the supranational level. It discusses further the relation between supranational and national labour market policy historically and in the future. This analysis includes also the relation with the EU employment guidelines, and, the attempts in recent years to have a continuos development of labour market policy in EU and EU-member states.

The first five years of the EU employment strategy, which was based on the Amsterdam Treaty and endorsed by the Luxembourg Summit, have come to an end, and an evaluation of the strategy based upon the national action plans, and a supranational comparison of the impact has been carried out by the Commission. The questions which arise in relation to the strategy, are twofold namely whether or not the employment strategies in the member states have been influenced by the supranational strategy in any way, and whether the use of the open method of co-ordination has added anything to policy-making. The article will begin by briefly describing the enactment of the labour market strategy, and will continue by discussing if, and if so how, it is possible to measure the impact of an open method which is mainly based on peer pressure, best practice, and bench-marking. It then goes on to discuss, based upon recent experience, whether we are witnessing the open method of coordination (OMC) as being the first step towards policy convergence, as the Commission wish to see it, or whether it is merely a ball which will only be played when the national players wish. If it is not a ball, they will opt for the scapegoat approach as has been witnessed in the EMU discussion. On the basis of the national action plans, and the supranational evaluations of them, some preliminary ideas will be presented of how and if the OMC is giving a new impetus to convergence, or it implies on that road.